Let there be heat

Yesterday our wood stove conked out. It filled the house with smoke instead of sending it up the chimney. Smoke was even oozing (can smoke ooze?) out of every little crack and crevice in the stove. It wasn't heating, and we were quickly reduced to opening doors and windows to vent the place. Did I mention it got down to negative 30 degrees up here last night? Ole' Murphy was prosecuting us to the full extent of his law, I can tell you that.

We got a roaring fire going in the fireplace, which helped. Our fireplace has a blower built in so that once the firebox gets heated, warm air can be circulated. It was really nice within about 5' of the fireplace, and the rest of the house stayed just above 50 degrees. We figured it was also a great time to run the self clean cycle on our oven (500 degrees for three hours or so).

Once we had a little heat in the place we tried to tackle the stove. It just started smoking really bad, do we have a green log in there? We took all the burning wood out of it and threw it in the snow outside. Nope, smoke still coming into the house. There's a lot of ash in there, maybe it would breathe better if we cleaned it out. I dug a trench in a snow bank and took 8 big buckets-full of ash out. Nope, still too smoky. Ah, there is a door for removing the ash that falls down the chimney. Took another bucket of ash from there. Nope, still smoky. Well, let's sleep on it, thank goodness for down comforters.

At 5AM this morning, we were awake and decided to try using the shop vac to clean out the horizontal portion of the chimney that goes out the back of the stove. (To do this, I had to get the generator to start in -30 degrees and then find the shop vac out in the garage. Brrrr!!!!) There was about an inch of ash there, but removing it didn't fix anything. However, while shining a light around in there, I saw that there was no opening in the back for the smoke to go up. I got a pole and tested this and confirmed that there seemed to be a blockage.

At 8:01AM we started calling chimney sweeps. It must be the off season for them because of the 4 in the phone book, two were out of town. One was too far away and didn't want to drive all the way up here, but the 4th guy was willing. He got here as the sun came out blazing brightly in complete defiance of the temperature. He agreed that there appeared to be a blockage and hopped up onto the roof with his brushes and poles. There was quite a bit of accumulated ash and creosote in the chimney, so it needed cleaning, for sure. However, at a certain point, his brush got stuck. He hit something metal. A glance inside the wood stove revealed he was banging on the horizontal pipe from above. He figured out that the horizontal pipe had somehow gotten pushed back into the chimney too far and had become closed off by the back wall of the chimney. It is a good thing he was a small man, for he was able to climb halfway into our stove and get a vicegrip clamped onto the pipe. He pulled it out a ways and lit a piece of paper. The smoke went up!!!

Now we have a very clean wood stove and chimney and a nice warm fire going. We stole the big coals out of the fireplace to jump-start the wood stove and now it is warming up in here. My nose is still cold, but there is no longer any frost on my window. We were able to settle out of court with Murphy for about $150, which could have been much worse.

Plumber's Crack

A good friend told me that anytime she embarked on a plumbing project, she ended up making three trips to the hardware store. I scoffed. I thought I'd planned pretty well for our latest adventure. If you recall from Water, Water All Around, we had a broken pipe in the garage. We decided to fix it so Michal could make better use of the apartment.

We turned on the water to the garage, briefly, in order to assess where the pipe was broken. It turned out we would have to replace about 20' of a straight run of pipe. We took inventory and headed to the hardware store. The next evening after work we got started...

Scoffer beware lest the universe decides to teach you a lesson. We are now up to 4 trips to the hardware store, and the run of pipes still leak. Each time we replace a section, we learn that another section leaks. In one location, behind a wall, in a crawlspace only Christie could reach, the pipe had a double split along the entire length. I'm really hoping that we are nearing the end of this little saga, otherwise, I may have to buy stock in Lowes just to recoup some of my losses.

Water, water, all around. (Or, why it was raining in the garage.)

Sunday morning. A rare opportunity to sleep in. I woke up from a dream in which I was searching for a bathroom. You all know what that means, right? I stumbled to the bathroom, did my thing, and headed back to bed. I only got a few steps because the toilet was making a whistling sound. Darn, I was SOOOO looking forward to sleeping in.

I knew this whistling sound from experience, the cistern that supplies our water was empty. We don't have a well, we have an underground spring, which is captured in a cistern up on the hillside opposite the house. The cistern is higher than the house, so our water pressure is supplied by gravity. It is a sweet setup. That is, unless someone leaves a water hose running overnight. It happened a few times this summer, which is why I knew the whistling sound.

Still in my PJs, I put on my mud boots and headed outside. I was going to turn off the hose and go back to bed. Peculiarly, the hose wasn't on. I opened the hatch to the crawlspace under the house and cocked my ear. Nope, no sound of running water (as from a broken pipe, which also happened this summer). OK, where else do we have pipes? The garage.

In the summer of '05, we had a young couple living in the apartment above the garage, and they installed a water line from the house to the garage. Predictably it froze in the winter, and in the spring of '06, there was a tiny crack seeping water onto the garage floor. I patched it with silicone tape and went on with life. Well, this lucky Sunday is when the pipes really cracked, and it was raining in the garage.

One of our winterizing tasks was to crawl under the house and turn off the water to the garage so it would not freeze again. Now seemed like a good time. Christie volunteered to do the crawling, bless her sweet, angelic heart! From deep under the house, she called out "Which valve do I close?" I told her it was the one on the line to the garage. She called back "There isn't one."

I'm trying to keep this blog family friendly, so I won't repeat what I said next, or about whom. What it came down to was that the only way to shut off the garage was to shut off the main valve. Nice.

Home Depot here I come. Christie went back to bed and I drove to town. I got a 3/4" valve and PVC cement, then headed home. The 3/4" valve did not fit the 3/4" pipe. This is when I learned that there is a difference between CPVC and PVC. I bought the wrong thing.

Fast forward to 9PM, we finally have the right parts to install a valve, so we turned off the main valve and put in the new valve. The PVC cement needed 2 hours to cure, so we left the water off overnight. This morning we turned the water back on and everything looks good, no leaks.

It is currently raining outside the garage, but I'm told that is normal.

I have the power!

At last, our primary generator is working again. Over $400 later, and putting some old parts back on, we have the 15kw propane generator charging the batteries again. There are still a few minor parts that need changing to get it running smoothly, right now it tends to backfire on startup. However, it is only about $20 worth of parts, and I can install them myself.

For the gearheads out there, we had the points and the condenser replaced, and the generator seemed to have good spark, but would not start. The tech suggested a new pressure regulator, which I installed myself, but didn't solve the problem. I checked each component of the fuel delivery and found them in working order. The tech came back out yesterday, and finally got it running by putting our old condenser back on. Evidently the new one was bad, out of the box. We've ordered a new distributor cap and rotor to complete the electrical overhaul, and that should help with the backfiring.

I'm still primarily a software engineer, but each time we get something fixed, I quiz the guy until I understand why it failed. I'm getting to where I almost understand internal combustion engines and how they work.

16 degrees

I doubt you'll ever hear me complain about the cold. I love it. I might have complained last February when one of our mares foaled in -30 degree weather, but really, it wasn't the cold so much as having to be awake in the middle of the night.

So let me just say for the record that being out in 16 degrees of chilly goodness doesn't bother me. I'm writing this not so you will feel sorry for me, but so you will get a real idea of what it is like "Living the Life."

My alarm went off at 6:30AM like always. After a couple of snoozes, and a little staring into empty space, I was ready to start my day. Morning chores today included feeding the cats (so they will stop complaining about how we starve them to death) and feeding the wood stove. Once I coaxed a bit of flame from the new log I threw in, I checked the power.

Earlier you saw my solar array. That solar power feeds into a bank of 12 6-volt deep cycle batteries arranged to produce 24 volts. Whatever the sun doesn't provide, our generator does. Whenever I come in or out, I check the battery level, it is a good habit to be in as it avoids some nasty surprises. At 23.8 volts, it is time to charge the batteries, at 22.0 volts the system shuts down to avoid damaging the batteries. I consider this a nasty surprise.

After feeding the cats and the stove, I checked the power, and we were down to 23.4 volts, which means we need to charge the batteries SOON. I threw on a flannel jacket, grabbed a flashlight, and trudged out into the pre-dawn darkness. My shoes crunched in the frost on the lawn. I gassed-up the backup generator and started it.

Our primary generator runs on propane and is fed from a 1000 gallon talk, so it never needs to be gassed-up. Our primary generator operates on a remote switch, so there's no need to trudge anywhere. Out primary generator can be started automatically by the power system without any intervention from me. Our primary generator, as you may have guessed by now, is not working.

So there I was trudging back into the house. Luckily the morning fog had lifted from my brain enough to wonder why the batteries weren't charging. Turing on the generator isn't enough, you have to make sure the power is actually being consumed. OK, back outside, yep, the breaker on the generator was popped. Aha, that explains why last night's run didn't charge the batteries enough...

Welcome to life off the grid. Would I trade this in for power lines and electric bills? Nope.